


what ever that is (do it with your whole soul)

by ussihavelovedthestarstoofondly



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, discussions of death and space, elizabeth is his sister and she's great, len really needs to rethink his career choices, maybe I'll make it into something bigger, trek fest 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 20:39:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14941007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ussihavelovedthestarstoofondly/pseuds/ussihavelovedthestarstoofondly
Summary: “He’d tell us what he’s always told us, do what makes you happy, what makes you healthy, and what makes it so you’re not lonely, and what ever that is, do it with your whole soul.”





	what ever that is (do it with your whole soul)

Len really shouldn’t have been surprised that it would be his youngest sister who would come find him. She drops down next to him in a surprisingly graceful plop of wavy, curly brown hair and green eyes. Genetically he thinks he and his three sisters are probably an interesting case. Between the four of them there are two brunets, two blondes, two sets of green eyes, one set of hazel, and one set of blue.  
“If you’re here to coach me or something…” He starts.   
“Shut up,” Elizabeth says, and Len raises his eyebrows but complies, watching as his sister narrows her eyes at the live oaks and dripping with Spanish moss. She tilts her head, like she’s listening intently to the birds.  
“Junco hyemalis. Dark eyed junco,” She eventually says. Len sighs. He was brooding just fine on his own before Eli decided she needed to come bird watch right next to him.   
“Elizabeth is there a reason you’re out here disturbin’ the peace?” Len gets an eyebrow raised for that.  
“You were out here ‘distibin’ the peace’ first. ‘Sides, do you really think I want to spend any time with them?” She tilts her head back towards the house. Len snorts.  
“I swear you’re pickin’ fights with them just cause you can.” Eli shrugs.  
“Not like I’m going to be around much longer anyway. I don’t see any point in avoiding the fights.” Len just huffs and leans back on the grass. His sister opts for sitting against the tree.  
“I joined Star Fleet.” Eli’s sharp laughter is a harsh contrast to the gentle sounds around them.  
“Jesus, Len. Why the hell do you think that’s a good idea?” He narrows his eyes at her. Captain Christopher Pike had sounded damn convincing in the bar. In the sober light of day, Len is wondering just what in the hell he got himself signed up for.  
“I don’t! I hate space!” He tells his sister.   
“Star Fleet operates in space, you idiot!” Eli snaps. Len narrows his eyes, feeling the tensions of the last seven months well up again.   
“I am well aware of where Star Fleet operates,” Len growls. Eli doesn’t respond, but Len doesn’t really expect her to. His sister is tolerant of many things that he is not, but contradictions are not one of them. He stares up at the fragments of blue sky through the branches of the tree, and takes deep, slow breaths trying to lower his heart rate.  
“I would have done the same thing, you know.” Len turns his head to look at his sister when she speaks. She’s staring up at the tree and won’t meet his eyes.  
“What do you mean?” The tightness in his chest says he knows exactly what she means.  
“With Dad. I would have helped him to. I would have given him physician assisted suicide.” Len feels tears well up all over again, and he sits up.  
“They found a cure, Eli.” She sighs with a weight that belies her 19 years.  
“Len, do you think I would have gotten on that shuttle if I had known what was going to happen?” He remembers being the one to pick up the phone on that call. He also remembers walking into the hospital with his Mother and Father to see his baby sister hooked up to machines, countless tubes running in and out of her body, keeping her alive. He remembers her waking, and looking at him, and saying, not asking, that she was the only survivor of the horrific shuttle crash.  
“I would hope not.” He snaps. As always, Eli is immune to his bouts of cynicism and general anger, and overall acerbic attitude.  
“Would I have let Sarah get on?” He watches the muscle in her jaw jump, and he’s pretty sure he knows where she’s going with this.  
“No,” He says quietly.  
“Would you have done as Dad asked if you knew they were going to find a cure?”  
“No.”  
“And how would you have known they were going to find a cure? Did you suddenly develop the ability to tell the future? And in that case, you’re helping me with stock market investments because I want to retire by thirty and spend the rest of my days on Risan beaches.” Len barks out a semblance of a laugh despite himself. His sister’s grinning, even if she still hasn’t looked from the trees.  
“Just because I understand it objectively, doesn’t mean it makes a difference,” Len says. Eli just shrugs.  
“Maybe not now. But it will,” She says with the authority of someone who knows too much about a certain subject. He idly wonders what kind of woman his sister would have turned out to be if she hadn’t lost her best friend and the ability to have children in the first non-Star Fleet shuttle crash in 77 years. He wonders if his aviphobia would have faded with time if he didn’t remember picking her up off the floor every time she fell because of the massive trauma her body endured at 12 years old; if he didn’t remember the five month hospital stay and twenty seven surgeries she had to go through to be able to function at a normal human level today. She doesn’t say anything else, and Len doesn’t feel the need to respond.  
“You’re still going into space?” He eventually asks.  
“Yep. Emergency Response Team, Medical Division.” Len snorts. That’s the biggest difference between him and his sister. Len runs away when he gets scared, Eli runs straight towards it, and generally, fights it. He always admires that about her. She finally turns to look at him with a gaze that he knows sees far more than anyone else would.  
“You’ll be ok. You can make it through Star Fleet. The question is will you do it well?” Len sighs.  
“I’m a good doctor.” He knows his sister hears the hesitancy in his words, the self-depreciation, the depression. She frowns.   
“You’re a damn good doctor. Star Fleet will be lucky to have you.” Len doesn’t respond. He hears his sister huff.  
“Let’s make a bet then. You make it through Star Fleet, and do it well, and I’ll get you a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Monogram Tennessee Whiskey. You don’t, you get me a bottle.” Len boggles at his sister. Then narrows his eyes.  
“Are you darin’ me to get good grades?” She laughs, her eyes crinkling around the corners the same way their father’s did.  
“Well, that’s one way to put it, Lenny.” Len just sticks his hand out and she shakes it.  
“Deal,” He says.   
“Let’s see. It’s May 27th. And you won’t start at the Academy until September. Y’know what that means?” Len narrows eyes as Eli bounces up.  
“That’s enough time for a sibling road trip, big brother!” Len groans, but accepts Eli’s hand when she holds it out to him. They both pause, looking at the gravestone they’d been ignoring so far.  
“He’d be proud of you, you know.” Len stares at the name carved into the white marble, the words ‘Loving Son, Husband, and Father’ a damning statement underneath, forever carved in the stone.  
“I wanted to study neurology because of you, you know.” He sees the movement of Eli tilting her head out of the corner of his eye. “I wasn’t supposed to hear, but I heard them say that for all intents and purposes, the metal from the shuttle had been touching your spine, and I kept thinking that you had just lost your best friend, it wouldn’t be fair if you lost the ability to walk, too.” His sister just squeezes his arm, hard.  
“C’mon, Len. We’ve got a road trip to pack for.” He finally turns when she’s almost to the gate of the graveyard.  
“Hey Eli? What do you think he’d say about us going into space?” Len gestures to their father’s grave stone. His sister stares at him for a long time, and Len’s sure she’s not going to answer.  
“He’d tell us what he’s always told us, do what makes you happy, what makes you healthy, and what makes it so you’re not lonely, and what ever that is, do it with your whole soul.” Len nods, looking back at the new, white stone before following his sister out of the graveyard and towards San Francisco and the dark, frozen, terrible silence of space.

**Author's Note:**

> Was written as a one shot for Trek Fest 2018 but maybe I'll make it into something bigger? Thoughts?   
> Do you like Elizabeth?   
> Please leave comments or kudos they feed my soul.


End file.
